There is a contrast between the leadership styles of Jeff Bezos of Amazon and Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook reading the two articles. Both companies are successful and achieved their victories in different ways. In the “4 Former Amazon Employees on What It’s Like Working for Jeff Bezos”, describes Bezos leveraging technology to make employees aware of potential issues with an email (Upadhyaya, 2013). While Zuckerberg in “Take It or Leave It: Zuckerberg’s Approach to Advising Instagram After Acquisition” employed a more hands-off approaching allowing the leaders at Instagram to lead using their judgment (Carr, 2013). The obvious answer to their communications and leadership approaches could relate to generational and educational differences. …show more content…
In exploring them, they both have personal styles that focus more on fundamental approaches rather than generational differences. In a past MBA course, I studied the leadership qualities of Mark Zuckerberg. Out of these two leaders whom I admire, Zuckerberg is the individual I would prefer to work. Ekaterina Walter wrote an article in Inc. magazine where she identified five leadership attributes of Mark Zuckerberg that contributed to his success. They are passion, purpose, people, product, and partnerships. This transformational leadership skill is part of what makes him such an effective leader. Part of Mark Zuckerberg 's mission at Facebook enhanced openness and transparency, and he believes openness fosters connectivity. Zuckerberg utilizes a charismatic/transformational/authentic leadership approach. He is self-confident, optimistic, resilient, results-oriented, and an …show more content…
Customer service is paramount at Amazon and Bezos consistently reminds employees that their focus needs to consider the impact and feeling of the consumer. He is known to be an outside the box thinking daring to be bold and go against the norm. Utilizing drones to reduce delivery times while minimizing costs display Bezos focus on customers and stakeholders (Amazon Prime Air, n.d.). Bezos is a task-oriented transactional leader, who Brad Stone in his book “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon”, described Bezos as a micromanager who does not value the opinion of his employees (Stone, 2013). These individuals excel in achieving goals and positive outcomes but need improvement in human relations. Bezos tends to be bold and brash and not warm and fuzzy, and empathy is a critical component to others buying into your vision (Schwartz, 2015). He often becomes frustrated at his employees and berates them publicly; an unusual approach for an individual who built an amazing company. A company built on fear and stress looks beautiful from the outside but internally could quickly collapse if Bezos does not address his communications approach. Corporate culture is vital to the long-term future of business and Bezos needs to recognize how he leads the internal customer will translate over to the external consumer. Managing through fear and
History”, n.d.). But the unbelievable pace at which Amazon added new products and new customers proved to be a formidable barrier for any competitors. Within the first 10 years Amazon accomplished an unbelievable feat; it had 49 million customers and 6.9 billion dollars in revenue, and it had done so by selling some products at a loss to build market share (Rivlin, 2005). At times it was difficult leveraging so much capital to grow market share, but Jeff Bezos’ focus on the customer and long term growth of the company proved to be the real reason Amazon didn’t fall prey to the .com bust like so many other internet
As of 2016, Facebook cofounder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has a net worth, estimated by Forbes, of around $47 billion. One of the richest people of the world, Mark Zuckerberg exemplifies heroic character, not attributed to fame and fortune, but his ability to utilize his success to impact others. In 2004, Zuckerberg decided to drop out of Harvard University in order to focus on developing his social media network, Facebook (The Editors). Now, at thirty-one years of age, Mark utilizes his self-created superpower, Facebook, to connect billions of people around the world. A hero, usually bolstered by a superpower, embodies the traits of ordinariness, benevolence, and idealism. Mark Zuckerberg leads a heroic life by being relatable, demonstrating
Blandino, S. (2012). Amazon’s Culture: How to Shape an Enduring Organizational Culture. Retrieved from: http://www.faithvillage.com/article/81939068ed36450197491582db1d7b21/amazon
Jeff Bezo’s began Amazon in his garage in July 1995 with three Sun workstations setting on wooden doors for tables and extension cords running from everywhere (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Right from the beginning he was a visionary leaving his well paying job as a senior vice president with D. E. Shaw to begin Amazon.com (Academy of Achievement, 2010). Being the visionary that he is he saw an opportunity prompted by the huge growth rate of internet use in a single year and ran with it never looking back. Jeff realized that the internet had “no real commerce to speak of” so he began researching possible businesses (Academy of Achievement, 2010). “After reviewing 20 mail order businesses and deciding which could be conducted more efficiently over the internet than by traditional means he decided on books” (Academy of Achievement, 2010). He thought books were perfect because attempting to send huge catalogs for all the available books would be expensive and cumbersome, but an online resource database that was easy to navigate would provide customers with easy access and a single point from which to shop. “In 30 days, with no press, Amazon had sold books in all 50 states and 45 foreign countries, obviously by the success of Amazon he was right (Academy of Achievement, 2010). In a case study written by Javad Kargar called “Amazon.com in 2003” he stated that “Amazon's online store was a big hit, with about $5 million in the first year of operations” (2004). This huge success so quickly would have confirmed for Jeff that his idea was viable and drove him to continue to strive for more. Jeff Bezo’s charismatic-visionary leadership is the key to his and Amazon’s success.
Leadership at times can be a complex topic to delve into and may appear to be a simple and graspable concept for a certain few. Leadership skills are not simply acquired through position, seniority, pay scale, or the amount of titles an individual holds but is a characteristic acquired or is an innate trait for the fortunate few who possess it. Leadership can be misconstrued with management; a manager “manages” the daily operations of a company’s work while a leader envisions, influences, and empowers the individuals around them.
Central Idea: Mark Zuckerberg became a programming prodigy at an early age who became the Chairman and CEO Founder of Facebook.
Perhaps he has something extra that has propelled him above everybody else. Everything that he touches seems to turn to gold. Donald Trump’s leadership style has made him rich, powerful, famous and known throughout the world. This paper will examine some of these leadership styles. Leadership traits “Leadership research has not revealed a single trait that is possessed by all successful leaders, but a number of characteristics have been identified that are common to many of them”(Timpe, p.30, 1987).
For everyone in the business world, Mark Zuckerberg is a well-known name to them. He is an undeniably young, successful businessman. However, Zuckerberg is also a very successful leader in his own company as well as in the world. His impact from creating Facebook is more than just impressive. Zuckerberg created the social media website where people get connected virtually and led the company to incredible success. Zuckerberg’s leadership style can be seen with inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation, and idealized influence. With all the aforementioned components, Mark Zuckerberg is a great example of transformational leadership.
Launched by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon.com website started in 1995 and is today considered as one of the most prominent retail website on the internet with a record turnover of US$ 14.87 billion in 2007. Jeff Bezos’s intention was to create an internet based company with the most dedicated product portfolio on the internet where customers could find anything they might want. Amazon’s success is based on technology, services and products (Jens et al., 2003).
When Amazon.com first began in 1995, as strictly a book retailer, Bezos knew he had discovered an excellent company. After all, a physical bookstore cannot stock anywhere close to the number of books Amazon can offer online. Within a year, the company had a customer base of approximately 340,000 consumers and daily site visits were huge as well. But Bezos wanted to expand the company to offer music and DVDs, because he realized there was little or no barrier of entry. In the next years Amazon would emerge as a marketplace, expanding the company globally offering products from toys to kitchenware. Because of the relatively cheap prices Amazon was offering and also the growing number of online shoppers, the company was doing tremendous amounts of sales and creating profits.
In the management process, leadership is the first and can be the most influential part of the process. Both Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have very similar approaches to leadership styles in regards to the vision for Apple. Steve’s is more on a vision for the future charismatic side, where as Cook’s vision is tied into social and ethical responsibilities. While they have differences in the approach to the direction of the company, they use their position of power to influence decisions and visions. In Chapter 11 of Exploring Management, “Tom Peters says that a leader is “rarely – possibly never- the best performer””
Amazon’s also tried to spearhead the industry by introducing the customer-pleasing traits in terms of the technology, order fulfillment and retailing strategies categori...
Amazon is best known for their kindle, fast shipping, and selling various products (Smith). With Amazon being such a large corporation, professionalism, academics, character, and engagement are crucial parts of the success of the company. Professionalism: Amazon has grown to become the largest internet-based retailer in the world by total sales. It began as primarily an online bookstore and soon began to sell more and more electronics and then over time began to sell pretty much anything. In 1998, Amazon earned about $0.6 billion, which held steady growth from 1998-2006 (“Amazon.com”).
Amazon has recorded a magnificent success in its business throughout the years that it has been in operation. It has attracted almost all people to use it when necessary. Amazon has built its success in business methodically and slowly. Amazon has made much success because of its ability to read market trends and diversify its operations. It started as an online book selling company. However, it changed its operations and started selling other products. Currently, many large retail shops use Amazon to host and power their websites, for instance, sears and virgin megastores. Amazon now attracts over fifty million visitors in a period of one month. Amazon has tried to make their services fit each individual user. It has based its services on the end user. It has shipping discounts, customer product reviews and a credit card with bonuses. It also has prime membership, product forums and 1-click ordering system among other services. The company has tried to make a remarkable experience for customers and visitors (Thomas, 2006).
Jeffrey Bezos, the founder and current CEO of Amazon.com, initially started the company as an online bookstore in 1994. Within several months, Amazon spread its operation to all 50 states and abroad. Presently, customers from over 45 countries buy at Amazon. Over a short period of time, the company expanded sales to electronics, video games, software, CDs, DVDs, MP3 downloads, food, furniture, apparel, jewelry, and toys. Today, the company even produces its own products such as the Kindle series. Also, Amazon.com is one of the major providers of cloud computing services. Currently, the company is the largest global online retailer responsible for 20% of online retail market share.